


Hold on (for the cracks in your bones to turn to metal)

by Analinea



Series: Be still, my whumper's heart [8]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Day 12, Gen, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, I am starting to break down, Stay safe please, Tony Whump, Whump, Whumptober 2020, alright, broken trust, but I have to warn for discussion of self harm, but it's fitting heh, my latest brotp guys, no wait that's not the theme that's just me, so there's blood, theme was i think i've broken something
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 07:41:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26968417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Analinea/pseuds/Analinea
Summary: “How did this happen, Tony?” Natasha asks, bandaging Tony’s busted hand. Iron Man’s color seeps out from under his skin but his bones are not made of any kind of alloy: he’s pretty sure one of his fingers is broken.
Relationships: Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark
Series: Be still, my whumper's heart [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947337
Kudos: 12
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Hold on (for the cracks in your bones to turn to metal)

**Author's Note:**

> I'll warn again in case you skipped the tags: **self-harm**  
>  I'm not the best judge of how heavy things are, so I'll put spoilers in the end notes just in case. Stay safe. 
> 
> Other than that, enjoy the result of me breaking down over the fact that I'm writing a story to post it the next day lol please help

“How did this happen, Tony?” Natasha asks, bandaging Tony’s busted hand. Iron Man’s color seeps out from under his skin but his bones are not made of any kind of alloy: he’s pretty sure one of his fingers is broken. 

“I’m not drunk,” he preludes, head tilted down, “I was just frustrated.” He glances up at her to see if she read between the lines or if he needs to go on. He keeps silent, bows his head again. 

He’s relieved to avoid saying out loud that he consciously, though impulsively, decided to hit his armored suit full force; he feels silly enough about it already.

“And you wanted to hurt?” Her raspy voice always sets behind Tony’s sternum, flowing around there with a tickle. It’s a coiled sound, all at once ready to protect and to hurt, never giving too much away. It gives him pause.

“I didn’t hurt anyone,” he frowns, setting his eyes into hers and wondering if she understood him wrong after all. 

“That’s not what I meant.” The dim stove lights give her irises a dark color that bores into Tony.

He stills, mouth hung open on a comeback he doesn’t have. The quiet stretches, broken only by the rustle of Natasha’s clothes as she settles the bandage between each of his fingers in turn. 

Tony hisses, when she’s done and moves on to prod gently at his ring finger. She twists around to rummage through the massive kit they keep on the common floor. It started as a basic one before they added and added to it, turning it into a testament to each of their cuts and burns. Natasha finds a finger brace in it that Tony doesn’t remember anyone using before.

“You can’t keep doing this,” she says, done with the tending to but keeping his cold hand in her warm one. When he gets the courage to look up, he finds her waiting, watching. Lately, she has done a lot of that. 

It’s how she caught him sitting at the kitchen table at night, trying to bandage himself. 

“I didn’t want to hurt myself,” he needs her to know that. “I was angry.”

“You didn’t know where to put that feeling.” She tilts her head, considering. For a while after they became a team, Tony had been terrified of her assessing gaze. 

Her words weighed more than his then; though Tony could go against Fury as long as the team backed him up, he couldn’t stay if the Avengers themselves didn’t want him there. 

_ I don’t need a team anyway _ , he reassured himself, both a truth and a lie. He could work alone, he found that he didn’t really want to. 

He knows now not to be scared of Natasha. 

“You couldn’t hurt me if you tried,” she says next, a taunting grin on her lips. 

Tony jerks his head back at the non-sequitur. “I...know that?”

“So come fight me, when you’re angry.”

He sniffs, “We already train together twice a week at least. You want to kick my ass even more?”

She hums, “Don’t pretend you don’t hold your ground perfectly fine against us. I’m not offering to train, anyway. I’m offering to fight.”

He tries but he can’t read her now. The visual silence sends him rambling. “I’m sure that would be frowned upon by the,” he gestures widely with his free hand, “whatever authorities are concerned here. I’m not against a fight club, but I’m confused about the goal here. You want to be the one hurting me, as opposed to me hurting myself?”

She reproachfully raises an eyebrow. 

“Alright,” he amends with a shrug, averting his eyes. “I know.” 

Natasha might know how to damage a body in ways unheard of, but she also knows how not to. She won’t go soft against him in training; she’s still the only one who never accidentally twisted his arm too far or made him fall wrong. “I trust you,” he adds, voice low. He nods to accept her offer. As a promise. 

“I trust you too,” she murmurs back. It contains so much more than simply trusting Tony to be more careful with himself. He knows and cherishes that.

He doesn’t want to lose it.

“Sir–” JARVIS warns, not of an outside danger but of a dangerous attitude from  _ Tony _ . 

Tony can’t answer, cuts his AI short with a complicated hand gesture that mutes him. Follows up with a complete override of all security protocols. JARVIS can’t warn anyone of this– the AI has founds ways to navigate through the rules of privacy, when his creator is about to do something way too stupid.

But Tony can’t be stopped. Can’t say anything, or this will be for nothing. 

It must have happened two nights ago, at the Gala. He has been growing more and more agitated ever since, tendrils of wrongness reaching his brain all the way from his aching arm. He has looked and scanned but nothing came up until now. Until whatever is buried under his skin started pushing up enough to make waves between his veins. 

Tony pants as he turns his workshop over to find something suitable for what he has to do. He’s panicking, though he doesn’t feel it as much as analyzes his body’s reaction and interpreting them. He swipes the sweat out of his eyes, pushes his wet hair back. 

Whoever did this is clever, he has to give them that. He didn’t feel a thing at the Gala, yet there’s now a piece of tech in his arm that is slowly taking control of him, listening in. 

The suspicions started earlier in the day, from fractions of seconds disconnected from his own body. Piloted like a flesh and bones Iron Man suit. 

He didn’t say a thing, he couldn’t. No one would believe him, no with their worry and doctors a phone call away. That’s the work of Tony’s adversary too, he’s sure, a campaign to sap his authority. They’re watching, he feels it. 

Bits and pieces of discarded projects clatter to the ground when he moves the wrong file, irritating his frayed nerves. He jumps, fumbles even more. Fighting for control makes him clumsy; he doesn’t have much time left. When the enemy takes over…

Tony could be used for anything. There’s an arsenal of weapons at his disposal, ready to hurt those he loves most. Their trust being their downfall.

JARVIS could be infected like Tony is, too. Maybe the override isn’t enough. Tony will have to purge the system once he’s free; now he’ll make do with shutting the power down. 

Lights turn off one by one leaving only the emergency ones, followed by echoes of locks clanking shut. Some safety doors will stay open for evacuation procedures. The constant whirring of machines dies down, eerie silence buzzing in Tony’s ears. 

That worked. The grasp of his enemy loosens enough that Tony is able to find a suitable tool. A screwdriver, flat head, medium size. Sharper at the top than the big one next to it. 

He sits on a stool heavily, not sure his shaky knees could’ve held him up longer. He lays his arm down in front of him, mirroring the posture he took months ago to implant the subdermal chips to call the armor to himself. So primitive. He’s done so much better since then; all about to be taken against his will. 

He can’t bear the thought of more deaths in his name.

He takes a deep breath.

The tip of the screwdriver dips into his skin a little, rests there as he closes his eyes. Tony has never been afraid of pain, but this is way more than that. It’s wrestling for control of his life again and again; digging through himself, in every way possible, to free himself.

He thought he’d filled up every fissure they could use to get hold of him. He must have slipped up. He must have lost sight of protecting himself, so full of trust now. 

“Tony!” a shout. A bang on the window next to the deadlocked door. He forgot to lower the blinds earlier; he can’t look up and see Natasha’s expression. 

His hand shakes, but that doesn’t matter. 

His heart skips a beat, compensates by hammering against the ARC reactor. 

He doesn’t have a choice.

He pushes down on the screwdriver.

Tony should have known better. 

He’s sitting on the floor, back to the bench; he collapsed from the stool at some point. The banging on the door never let up, nor did the calls of his name, but they became one with the heavy knock of his heart on his bones. Blood rushes past his eardrums with the decibels of a place taking flight, weighting his head down; chin on his chest, he’s left staring at the blood pulsating out of him, pooling to paint the floor under him.

He’s an Iron Man shaped cut-out in the red. That makes him laugh out the little air he has left. 

He can’t move his fingers. Fine motricity, shot to hell. Delicate works, impossible. It doesn’t hurt. It’s way too funny for it to hurt. 

He feels himself flying, but tries hard not to pass out. Because he’s cold, and he’s woken up in caves and snow before. He’s not keen on a repeat of that. 

He blinks hard, eyes rolling around. He can’t pinpoint where the feeling of being watched comes from, but it’s still there. He did all this for nothing: the tech must have been programmed to move if threatened, because he didn’t find anything before the pain of digging through his arm became too much. 

He’d cut the rest of him off, if he had the strength, but as it is he can’t even breathe. 

Something hisses and puffs; Tony jolts when someone rushes to him but relaxes when he recognizes Natasha. Someone else is in the room, frantic, but she’s the eye of the storm and he only sees her. 

He remembers to be in pain, at the look on her face. “Stark,” she says, and he chokes on the million pieces of his heart breaking to dust. Not even the reactor can fix that. And Tony’s too tired to pick up the pieces. He’s done. 

He closes his eyes. 

“Stark! Tony!”

He doesn’t answer. He’d rather not stay here, where it’s cold. Where he’s lost the fire of Natasha’s trust. 

Tony’s the grumpiest morning person in existence. He frowns when the light hitting his eyes doesn’t  _ go away _ . 

“There you are,” Natasha says, jolting Tony awake. What the hell is she doing in his bedr–

This is not his room. This is medical. Natasha is sitting next to the bed, legs up on the chair, watching him quietly. 

When he tries to move it, his arm doesn’t move; he takes a breath and raises the other one very slowly, pressing a hand against his chest. He relaxes at the bite of metal from under the covers. Alright. Not a hundred percent bad. 

He turns his head on the pillow to face Natasha, trying to clear the sand lining his throat with a subtle cough. “Messed up something important?” he rasps out, waiting for her reaction, “Forgot a birthday?” 

He spots the glass sitting on the bedside table; the IV line in the back of his hand is too short for him to reach it. Natasha straightens up, puts the glass in arm’s reach. Tony almost drops it, fingers still numb, but appreciates how she doesn’t make things overly easier for him. She knows how much he hates that, even when it’s very stupid.

“So…,” he steels himself, sighing as he turns to look at his unmovable arm. “Huh.” It’s still there. It’s bandaged from wrist to elbow, but it’s whole. 

A memory itches at the back of his mind. “Did you…” he frowns, “catch–?” He turns questioning eyes on her. There’s something wrong with the whole situation. 

“We did catch someone. Why did you do it?” Natasha’s unreadable. Tony knows she can do that at will, but he’s grown used to her defenses being down enough that he could guess her thoughts. So she’s coming into this conversation with a lifeline ready to pull her back. 

Tony swallows heavily. “Will I make a full recovery?” He fakes confidence as he stalls. He’s afraid of giving her the wrong answer, of breaking everything beyond repairs. 

“If you learn patience, you will.”

“Ouch,” he puts his hand on his chest, but her silence peels away at the pretense and he looks down. “There was a device, someone…” he takes a shaky breath, clinging to the present, “someone planted a device inside my arm.”

“There wasn’t anything in your arm, Tony,” Natasha says after a pause, so soft.

His head shoots up with a stunned, “What?” but she’s not done. He notes her loosened up shoulders, wonders what that means, then.

“You were poisoned at the Gala,” she explains, never looking away from him, “Neurotoxic agent.” 

“What?” Tony repeats, blinking at her.

“I’m sorry.” She doesn’t falter, but Tony gets it suddenly.

He thought he’d shattered her trust in him by breaking the unspoken promise between them. But she thinks he got hurt  _ on her watch _ , and that he won’t trust her again to protect him. 

It’s all so wrong.

He reaches out, takes her hand in his. Holds on like everything depends on this touch. “You have steady fingers, don’t you?”

She raises an eyebrow at him. “Why?” 

“I’m going to need some help,” he tilts his chin towards his useless arm. “I’ll even let you choose the music,” he grins, “and the topic of conversation. Consider it fair payment for your help.”

She narrows her eyes at him with a huff, barely there smile on her lips. “You trying to make the best spy talk?” Then she looks down and shakes her head, “You better not be insufferable.”

Tony laughs. “Honey, I’m a delight to be around.”

“Alright,” a hint of challenge to the tilt of her head. “I trust you.”

“I trust you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: Natasha asks Tony if he hurt himself on purpose after he hurt his hand. Then Tony thinks something has been planted in his arm and is listening in, he cuts through it himself without telling anyone. We don't see Natasha's POV of that, but it's implied that she could believe Tony is self-harming.


End file.
